Much like the patients they’re designed to help, hospitals, medical centers and health care organizations often experience their own kind of ailments: A lack of skilled workers or “medical staffingitis.”
Insufficient medical staff can lead to:
- Companies struggling to provide a high level of quality care for patients.
- Employees being overworked and burned out.
- An increased chance for errors.
Curing this so-called medical staffingitis can be difficult if it’s not diagnosed quickly and effectively. Unfortunately, there are several factors creating the right conditions for this problem to spread.
The health care industry also faces a unique quandary: As the general population ages, so too does the majority of the health care workforce. This means the number of people needing care is rising as the number of individuals providing the care is falling. This trend will only worsen until it becomes a chronic problem.
Not only does the sector face a peculiar predicament, the industry as a whole operates in its own peculiar fashion since the vast majority of clinics and hospitals are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This creates additional pressures and obstacles for human resource departments and recruiters trying to maintain sufficient staffing levels.
Several factors contribute to an environment where finding the most qualified medical staff is becoming increasingly difficult.Identifying the symptoms
For some organizations, staffing problems might be obvious and there could already be mechanisms in place to overcome that issue. However, sometimes the symptoms of medical staffingitis are not as pronounced. By identifying the symptoms early, organizations get in front of the problem before it becomes a full-blown epidemic.
Symptoms of medical staffingitis include, but are not limited to:
- A shortage of adequate support.
- A small pool of potential candidates.
- A steady turnover of employees.
- A lack of highly qualified candidates.
- A low morale amongst current staff due to being overworked.
If any of these ailments are present, it’s imperative that health care organizations take the steps necessary to quickly optimize their workforce capabilities.
“It’s imperative that care providers optimize their workforce capabilities.”
Unfortunately, since nurse managers are busy focusing on their primary job – providing care for patients – they don’t necessarily have the time to sit around creating and perfecting a hiring and scheduling process from scratch. As noted by Becker’s Hospital Review, 25 percent of nurse managers don’t use any tools at all to help optimize their scheduling process, while the same number still rely on pen-and-paper methods. This can lead to major labor shortfalls, scheduling conflicts and a host of other problems that all contribute to medical staffingitis.
An easy and effective remedy
In light of the severity of medical staffingitis, it’s important for hospitals, care providers and other medical centers to eliminate this problem before it spreads. Curing medical staffingitis is critical for increased patient satisfaction, improved staff morale and greater financial well being for health care organizations.
A medical staffing platform works as a cure for these conditions. A technology-enabled solution goes beyond merely fighting the symptoms of medical staffingitis – it attacks the root problem to cure the disease.
But how does it do this?
Medical staffing software utilizes a multi-pronged effort targeted specifically to help health care organizations and hospitals by using predictive analysis and advanced labor strategies to align scheduling and staffing with demand.
Medical staffing software offers care providers:
- Best-in-class recruiting functionality.
- Staff scheduling.
- Competency testing.
- Compliance management.
- Payroll and invoicing features.
- Time and attendance tracking.
- Data insight reporting.
- Vendor management systems.
BlueSky Medical Staffing Software, a workforce management platform designed specifically for the health care sector, is just the medicine needed to cure medical staffingitis. With the simple click of a button, recruiters or human resource personnel can pinpoint the ideal potential applicant and submit a candidate package. Then, if the organization wants to hire the candidate, all the paperwork can be signed off on digitally with BlueSky’s tools.
Click here to learn more about BlueSky Medical Staffing Software’s health care staffing solution.
